My Conversation with Ori Nir on the Situation in Israel

On March 19th I held a wide ranging conversation with Ori Nir, Vice President for Public Affairs at Americans for Peace Now on the situation in Israel. The discussion was sponsored by Temple Beth Shalom of Santa Fe and included the following topics:  Israel/Palestine, the proposed judicial reforms and religious pluralism. The link is below and starts about 3 minutes into the YouTube.

https://youtu.be/COqSE6osUZs

My Amazon Review of Daniel Gordis' "We Stand Divided: The Rift Between American Jews and Israel"

Couple’s Therapy

Daniel Gordis a vice president at Israel’s Shalem College has written an important book about the growing divide between Israeli and American Jewry. Indeed both parties are in need of some very serious couple’s therapy if the longstanding relationship is to remain intact.

What distinguishes Gordis’ view is that the divide is not about what Israel does, but rather what Israel is. Simply put Israel is not a transplanted America on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. Further it is not quite the Ashkenazi culture of American Jewry, but rather it is a lot closer to the Sephardi/Arab culture of the greater Middle East.

While most American commentators focus on what Israel does with respect to the treatment of its own Palestinian population as well as its treatment of Palestinians within the territories and the rightist policies of the Netanyahu government, to Gordis the issues run far deeper. To put it bluntly, changing the Israeli government will not solve the core issues. Similarly Israeli’s view American Jews as to being completely clueless about the security situation they face.

The differences revolve around three issues:

1.     America is built on a universalist ideology (all are welcome) while Israel is built on a particularist ideology. (Zionism)

2.     America is a liberal democracy while Israel is an ethnic democracy.

3.     Many Jews in America view Judaism solely as religion while Israeli’s view Judaism as both a religion and a people.

To be sure many American Jews are very comfortable with the Israeli version of these three issues, but to those American Jews who worship at the altar of secular liberalism, these are very serious differences and it is to these Jews that Gordis has written his book.

With respect to the first two differences many liberal Jews are uncomfortable with nationalism in general and ethnic nationalism in particular. Hence no matter what Israel does, they will have a quarrel with it. These differences are exacerbated by the control Israel’s orthodox Rabbinate exercises over religious life in the country thereby estranging both reform and conservative Jews. However as long as they believe that there is peoplehood associated with Judaism the way will be open to reconciliation. Put bluntly they can agree to differ. After all demography has shifted the locus of post-Holocaust Jewry from America to Israel.

However for those Americans who view Judaism solely as a religion for which there is historical precedent (See the 1885 Pittsburgh Platform of Reform Judaism), then reconciliation becomes an extremely difficult task. To them Israel would just become another country where the Zionist project has little or no meaning. That result would be extraordinarily sad for the Jewish people.

Thus as in couple’s therapy the issue isn’t about taking out the garbage, but rather the fundamental nature of the relationship. Both Americans and Israeli’s are going to have to reconcile their competing visions of culture, democracy and religion in order to live under the same big tent. Further as an American Zionist I would say to my secular friends that there is no guarantee a secular society will remain hospitable to Jews; witness Europe. I guess they would rather support the cowering Jews of the eastern European shtetls rather than the more muscular Jew of today’s Israel.  And to my religious friends I agree that Israel should be “a light unto the nations,” but it is an imperfect state living in a very hostile neighborhood. Thus reading Gordis’ book would be a first step on the rode to a fruitful couple’s therapy.

for the full Amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/R3K6HJHKOOV2PE/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

My Amazon Review of Steven R. Weisman's "The Chosen Wars: How Judaism Became an American Religion"

Becoming at Home in the New Promised Land

Former New York Times journalist Steven Weisman tells the story of how Judaism became Americanized largely through the lens of the disputes between the reformers and the traditionalists coming of age in the America of the 1800s. Much of the arguments then echo true through today as to the role of women, music, choirs, English versus Hebrew in services, peoplehood versus religion, the difference between awaiting a Messiah or Messianic Age, and the relative importance of prayer and study versus social action.

Much of his history takes place in Charleston, South Carolina, which in the 1820s had the largest Jewish community in America. In fact the struggle over an organ became so heated that it had to be settled in court. What interested me the most was that much of the arguments in South Carolina preceded the arrival of the mass immigration of German Jews in the 1840s and 50s who later became the back bone of Reform Judaism. And because there were so many Jews in the South, the Jewish community split over the issue of slavery with Judah P. Benjamin becoming the Confederacy’s secretary of state. Nevertheless when Lincoln died much of American Jewry viewed him as the second Moses.

Wiesman’s book is the history of the rise of the Reform movement and the traditionalist reaction against it against the backdrop of an America that was much different from Europe. To the reformers the synagogue was the new Temple and America was the New Jerusalem. Thus there was no need to pray for a rebuilding of the ancient temple and much of the ancient rules seemed out of place in the hustle and bustle to de Tocqueville’s America, especially on the frontier.

In America there was no formal rabbinic authority. In fact there were no Rabbis until the 1830s and no American ordained rabbis until the 1880s. As a result authority was vested in the individual congregations which meant that much of the argument took place among the laity. To be sure there were leading rabbis like Isaac Wise and Jacob Leeser, but they too were responsible to their congregations.

My problems with Weisman’s book are that it over emphasizes the intellectual divisions over the role of spirituality and over emphasizes social justice politics over a connection with G-d. In many respects religion represents the triumph of faith over reason. To be sure social justice is important, but Weisman’s definition is probably far from my own because it is my belief that much of the success that Jews have enjoyed in America has come not from political action, but rather from the blessings of the market economy. Thus, unfortunately there is some truth to the old joke that Reform Judaism is the Democratic Party with holidays. To be sure Jews should be “the light among nations,” but we should walk the walk with a great deal of humility. That said Weisman has given us a well-researched book on how the Jewish religion adapted and became of age in the new Promised Land.

For the full Amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/R16Z2C7OL6XBK3/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv